Bush given hijack alert before 9/11

The Bush administration was yesterday striving to play down the political impact of a secret document it was forced to release warning the president, weeks before the September 11 attacks, about "patterns of suspicious activity" in the US "consistent with preparations for hijackings".

The document, a daily intelligence briefing provided to President George Bush on August 6 2001, also mentioned "recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York" and a CIA-FBI investigation into a tip-off to the US embassy in the United Arab Emirates alleging an al-Qaida cell was in the US "planning attacks with explosives".

The publication of a top-secret Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) while the president in question is still in office is unprecedented, but the White House decided to release the one and a quarter page document after repeated demands by a commission looking into the September 11 hijackings.

The briefing paper, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US", has fast become exhibit A in the election-year row over whether the al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington could have been prevented.

Democrats on the September 11 commission have questioned why the president did not take urgent security measures after receiving the brief at his holiday home in Crawford, Texas. No urgent meetings appear to have been called and the president spent much of the following day playing golf, and bantering nonchalantly with the press.

The White House simultaneously released a "fact sheet" that was twice as long as the PDB, playing down its significance. "The PDB article did not warn of the 9/11 attacks," the fact sheet argued. "Although the PDB referred to the possibility of hijackings, it did not discuss the possible use of planes as weapons."

Mr Bush made his first com ment about the document yesterday, saying: "I wanted to know whether there was anything, any actionable intelligence." When he read the memo of August 6 2001, "I was satisfied that some of the matters were being looked into." He said the document contained "nothing about an attack on America".

The text of the PDB appeared to contradict the description given by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, in evidence to the September 11 commission last week. She said it contained only "historical information based on old reporting". Much of the document does refer back to earlier events, including "sensational threat reporting" from an unnamed foreign intelligence service in 1998, suggesting that Osama bin Laden wanted to hijack US aircraft to force the release of an imprisoned radical cleric.

"Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York," the PDB states.

"The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."

The fact sheet picks apart the PDB, pointing out that the surveillance of federal buildings turned out to be "consistent with tourist-related activity" and that: "None of the information relating to the patterns of suspicious activity was later deemed to be related to the 9/11 attacks".

In her testimony last week, Ms Rice argued the FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration were aware of the warnings. However, it has since emerged that the transportation secretary, Norman Mineta, was unaware of the threat.